LOGAN — Last month at this time, a new chair of the Cache County Republican Party emerged from the GOP local convention. Geoff Cox won that post in the second round of balloting by members of the county’s GOP Central Committee at Ridgeline High School.

On KVNU’s For the People program on Tuesday, now-former party chair Shellie Giddings said it’s harder for women when it comes to being in business and politics.

“People seemed to be fine with me when I was vice chair of the county party. But once I became chair (I started hearing a little bit of comments). I wouldn’t say too much of it, I mean, there was a lot of respect,” she said.

Giddings said there were a couple of former chairs who came to her at the end of the party convention and expressed surprise that she had lost.

She said they told her that she had been more effective in her one year as chair than any other chair had been in a full term or more than a full term.

“When women get involved, they generally have to be recruited, they don’t necessarily make the decision ‘I’m going to run for this.’ That’s what the research shows, that somebody has to come to them and say ‘hey, why don’t you run?’

“And that’s what happened to me,” Giddings explained. “I wasn’t just going to run for vice chair, and (former county chair) Chris Booth came to me and said ‘Hey, will you run for this?’”

She said it’s very different and also women look at how it’s going to affect their family and all of their relationships, and a man doesn’t do that.

Giddings feels that Utah’s religious culture might help shape how women are viewed and what their roles should be.

But she said that women’s voices are needed in the halls of government.